NCSU Libraries Focus Online
Volume 26 number 3 - Spring 2006
Geologists of the Information Landscape
By Amanda French, CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow, Digital Library Initiatives
Geologists think in millennia, not years. They study the drift
of continents, the stone-by-stone erosion of mountain ranges, the
leisurely stacking of stratum upon stratum. Librarians know better
than anyone that knowledge accretes in the same way: slowly. No
matter how many volumes stream busily in through Acquisitions every
day, the scale of time in a major academic library is best measured
in decades and centuries. But, of course, we more often watch the
clock of the daily bustle. When academic reference librarians teach,
for instance, they must usually do it hastily--a few minutes or
an hour at the reference desk, a day or two in someone else's classroom.
By that standard, a semester can seem like a blessed eternity in
which to help students explore the vast information landscape.
In 2004 Amy VanScoy and Megan Oakleaf of
Research and Information Services joined with Karen Ciccone of
the Natural Resources Library to develop a full course for Honors
undergraduates on advanced information literacy. When I arrived
in August 2004 for the CLIR Postdoctoral Fellowship, I was invited
to participate in planning and teaching the course. From the beginning,
the seminar was imagined as a course on both skills and issues;
students would not only get an extremely thorough grounding in
such essential skills as catalog searching, database searching,
government documents searching, and open Web searching and evaluation,
they would also be introduced to thought-provoking issues such
as intellectual freedom and privacy, the serials crisis and Open
Access movement, and the struggle to determine whether ideas and
intellectual creations are personal property or whether they belong
to everyone. Guest speakers from the NCSU Libraries in spring 2005
and spring 2006 have included Greg Raschke, interim
associate director for Collection Management, Organization, and
Preservation; Steven Mandeville-Gamble, head of
the Special Collections Research Center; Karrie Peterson,
head of Government Information Services; Jeff Essic,
data services librarian; and Peggy Hoon, scholarly
communication librarian.
University Honors Program (UHP) staff were pleased with the course
because Honors students frequently place out of introductory writing--where
basic research skills are taught--yet the Honors Program requires
its students to engage in significant original research in the
form of a "capstone project" near the end of their undergraduate
career. Larry Blanton, director of the UHP, has
come to the seminars as a guest speaker to discuss expectations
for the capstone project with the students. Both sessions have
expanded into discussions on the importance of academic research
more generally. Many Honors students may be poised for careers
in research, and some are already participating in research internships
where they can put their new knowledge to immediate use. The seminar
also fulfills a General Education Requirement for Social Sciences
for these students.
In the end-of-semester evaluations from the spring 2005 class,
all ten students who responded reported that they would recommend
the class to other students, especially but not exclusively to
students "interested in research." One student would
recommend the course because it "makes research as a process
seem more logical and less overwhelming, [and it] gives you a chance
to see how helpful librarians can be." Most students thought
the class would be best for sophomores, but one student wrote that "This
course would be awesome for Freshmen as it would give them many
tools to use over the next four years." At least four students
from the spring 2005 seminar attended the Honors Seminar Fair in
the fall of 2005 and did indeed recommend the course to other students.
As the spring semester continues, we and our students are happily
engaged in strolling through the information landscape, looking
through a surveyors' level here, examining a fossil underneath
the microscope there, learning to tell the difference between pyrite
and gold. We appreciate having the time to take our time, and we
appreciate being able to take the long view for once. |
